Reporter’s notebook: Prehistory to virtual reality – Houston Chronicle

The Norwegian publishers of Upstream, a weekly oil and gas journal, wanted to stand out at the Offshore Technology Conference, amid the hundreds of booths that compete for attention of convention-goers. So the company used some of its newsprint to design fabric that it fashioned into outfits for employees working the booth.

"We realized we wanted something more to be visible," said Rita Hausken Barkhodaee, sales director for the publishing company based in Stavanger, Norway. The company designed the first roll of fabric in 1999 and has updated it yearly to reflect the latest oil and gas news. The outfits are custom tailored in Singapore.

The outfits cause OTC convention-goers to stop and look. And when the employees roam around the exposition floor, they never stop promoting.

"You can always carry the brand with you," Barkhodaee said.

- L.M. Sixel

The two-year oil bust resembles the theorized asteroid 66 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs but ultimately paved the way for the evolution of human life, said Jose Gutierrez, Transocean director of technology and innovation.

Gutierrez spoke Tuesday at the Offshore Technology Conference about the need to innovate, collaborate and find greater cost efficiencies now that most energy companies can no longer afford to simply throw money at problems. Transocean is one of the world's largest offshore drillers.

"The oil debacle - it's actually the best opportunity for innovation," he said, noting that companies are now forced to collaborate. "This is like the meteor that landed in the Gulf of Mexico."

The theory is the asteroid hit in the Gulf of Mexico near the Yucatan Peninsula and wiped out most of the dinosaurs and much other life. But enough mammals survived and the evolutionary cycle eventually led to humans, who today get around on fuels for which dinos provided the raw materials.

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- Jordan Blum

The old cast-iron pipes are corroding at BP's oil and gas gathering center on Alaska's North Slope. The company knew it had to replace them, at an enormous cost. Then it plugged the project into a 3-D model. And the software revealed that the British oil major doesn't need to remove all the old piping, only some of it. Engineers can simply lay the new, stainless-steel pipe over the rest.

The digital subscription that allows BP to see its North Slope gathering center in augmented reality costs the company a few hundred thousand dollars a year. The adjustment to the pipe layout should, BP executives at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston said, save the company tens of millions of dollars.

Digital technology is changing the way companies drill for oil, examine reservoirs and rebuild refineries. And companies like BP say that, because the technology has largely been pioneered for other applications - Microsoft builds 3-D software for gaming, not oil and gas - they can access it for thousands, not millions, of dollars.

"Price points are drastically lower," said Dave Truch, technology director of digital innovation at BP. "We could not have done this two decades ago."

-David Hunn

In the visual cacophony of OTC's expo floor, companies do whatever they can to grab attention - and few things are more eye-catching than people staring, transfixed, into clunky virtual reality headsets.

It seemed to work for the Dutch offshore services provider Boskalis, at least, which lured passers-by in with the promise of a free out-of-body experience. (Its sushi counter, in contrast, was by invitation only.)

The actual experience, while effective in demonstrating the size and scope of towering rigs and ships, was less than transformative. It may have had to do with low-volume headphones that didn't fit well over the goggles. One user, George Osgood of Kiewit Offshore Services, was underwhelmed.

"I think a lot of it has to do with the content," Osgood says, mentioning that he's seen some of it before in regular videos. Still, some parts of Boskalis' VR demo offered a twist. "When you're on the vessel looking up at the crane, that's when it becomes neat."

-Lydia DePillis

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Reporter's notebook: Prehistory to virtual reality - Houston Chronicle